Sandy Alexandraki’s mother, Kostantina, arrived in Melbourne from Athens a few days ago, to finally meet her first grandchild, born in the midst of the pandemic.

She travelled with the same ticket she had booked to visit her daughter in April 2020. Ms Alexandraki explained to Neos Kosmos that with all the difficulties she saw other parents facing as they embarked on their journey to Australia, they waited until her mother was on the plane to Melbourne before they started celebrating.

“Anyone who hasn’t experienced it cannot understand what it feels like to not see your family for so many years,” Dimitri from Melbourne told Neos Kosmos.

It was the first time in history that an Australian government decided, in March 2020, to close the international borders to the rest of the world, and bar citizens and permanent residents from leaving the country when the pandemic broke out.

No one expected, however, that the travel ban, initially imposed for six months, would last 704 days!

On Monday 21 February, Australia lifted it’s last border restrictions to international arrivals, apart from Western Australia where the hard border will remain until 3 March.

For a country where almost half of the population has parents born overseas, the imposition of the travel ban was an additional blow to the mental health of millions of people.

During the last two years, children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews were born, brothers and sisters married, parents passed on, but like many other migrant groups, the Greeks of Australia could not travel to share life’s joys or sorrows with their loved ones.

“Anyone who hasn’t experienced it cannot understand what it feels like to not see your family for so many years,” Dimitri from Melbourne told Neos Kosmos.

Dimitri has postponed his wedding in Greece three times due to pandemic restrictions, and is hoping that there will be no new obstacles in their plans to travel in June to celebrate their union in Volos with family and friends.

“I haven’t seen my family and friends in three years, and I have no relatives here. I just can’t understand why a tennis player can come to Australia and an Australian permanent resident can’t go home to see his family and return. I hope this year we can reunite with our families, because anyone who hasn’t experienced it cannot understand what it’s like. I hear people who have their whole family here saying it’s good that the borders were closed. Obviously, they don’t know what it’s like to live in a country far from your homeland.”

Markella Fidanaki and her partner, Iasonas Zoubatopoulos, could not contain themselves, when the government opened the borders in November for citizens and permanent residents. They immediately booked flights and left for Greece a month ago to see their beloved relatives and friends for the first time since 2019. Their pent-up appetite for travel took them to France and Germany during their holidays.

But Ms Fidanaki admits that she was very nervous when she started planning the trip.

“We were very anxious about whether we would actually make the flight to Greece. But the travel procedures for Europe are very specific, so it’s easy after the first time,” she says, and adds that in Greece and in the other European countries they visited, they had no issue with their Australian vaccination certificates. They were accepted alongside their IDs, since scanning the digital certificate is not possible.

Counting down the days

There are many more expats who are literally counting down the days until their flight to Greece is due. What they are all looking forward to is basically the same. To see and hug brothers and sisters, parents, friends, to meet the babies born into the family during these years.

“If we have learned anything from the pandemic, it is to care about what is essential. Everything else can wait,” says Sandy Alexandraki who gave birth to her first child in February last year.

Babysitting and lullabies through the screen

“In a week he will turn one, and I think our experience of the pandemic was a little lighter because we had our baby,” she adds.

“My child was in front of the camera from the day he was born, with babysitting and support offered through video calls on messenger,” the young expat mother tells us, describing how her mother and grandmother sang to her baby every day and lulled him to sleep, through the screen.

Perhaps that’s why her young son became so quickly attached to his grandmother when he saw her in person for the first time. “Although he was briefly confused, since until then he had only seen her on the screen,” she laughs.

The reunion with the rest of her family will take place in May when she will travel with her partner Anh and their child to Athens. She can’t wait to see her brother and sister, her grandmother, her father, her best friends, some of who also gave birth during this time. And of course, to visit Paxos, her island that she has missed so much.

Kostas Naselos, who lives in Perth, feels a huge sense of relief after the West Australian Premier announced that the state’s border will reopen to the world on March 3.
This means that he will able to board the plane in April and celebrate Greek Easter with friends and relatives in Farsala, where he is from.

“Until recently, people here were applauding our premier, Mark McGowan, because we were living without masks and without any restrictions. But we knew that once 90 per cent of the population was vaccinated, the borders would reopen. So everyone was patient and held him in high regard. However when he reversed his decision and said that he would open up, only when we would all get the booster shot, there were many who started to react.”

2022 will be a year of celebration and joyful family reunions for many migrants.

Giolanda Paleologou and her husband Theodore Mamakos haven’t celebrated Easter in Greece for eight years, so they have decided to leave Brisbane for Athens in April and have a proper Greek Easter feast with their family.

Although Australia is by now a second home to them, it has been too long since they last saw their family, Ms Paleologou says. Like most newly arrived immigrants, her whole family is in Greece, not here.

The last time Nikos Sousamidis and his family visited Greece, their son was 8 years old. By the time they travel back in June he will be 15!

“They can’t wait to see him,” Mr Sousamidis tells Neos Kosmos, describing their plans to travel all over the country to see relatives in Thessaloniki, Rethymno, spend time in Lefkada, and in their favourite place of all, Halkidiki.

Ticket fares, according to what we were told, are not as expensive as we feared they would be, a few months ago. Most booked return flights for around $1500 per person in economy.

According to our sources, a huge number of Australians have already booked their flight to Greece, and amongst them thousands of Greek Australians.

“The lifting of the hard border on 21 February for vaccinated citizens is expected to significantly increase the flow of Australian tourists to Greece in 2022”, Tourism Minister, Vassilis Kilikias, said, after meeting with the Australian Ambassador in Athens, Arthur Spyrou.

Combined with Greece’s removal of the requirement of a negative PCR test for fully vaccinated travelers arriving from Australia, even more visitors will be interested in visiting, he added. Mr Spyrou said that he was also confident that 2022 will be an extremely successful tourist year.